Archive for the ‘chad billingsley’ tag

(Editor’s Note: sorry for the tardiness on this post: I had it completely written and a WordPress or browser glitch lost 1,000 words of analysis. So it took a bit of time to cobble back together what I had originally written. Then the Souza trade hit, then the Cuban thing … and this got pushed).

What a GM Meeting week! As one of the Fangraphs guys noted, there were so many transactions, so fast, that he literally gave up trying to write individual analysis pieces and went to a running diary of sorts. I was amazed at the number of significant deals and trades made, especially when it came to starters. So lets take a look at who shook things up.

Chicago White Sox: acquired Jeff Samardzija in Oakland’s fire sale to go with established ace Chris Sale, the highly underrated Jose Quintana. From there the White Sox have question marks: John Danks is just an innings eater at this point and Hector Noesi was not effective in 2014. But the White Sox have one of the brightest SP prospects in the game at AAA in Carlos Rodon (their fast-rising 2014 1st round pick) and their former #1 prospect Erik Johnson (who struggled in his debut in 2014 but has a good minor league track record). So by the latter part of 2015 the White Sox could be a scary team for opposing offenses to face.

Minnesota: just signed Ervin Santana to join a rotation containing the rejuvinated Phil Hughes, the decent Ricky Nolasco and first rounder Kyle Gibson. If they (finally) call up former Nats 1st rounder Alex Meyer to fill out the rotation and replace the dregs that gave them #4 and #5 rotation spot starts last year, they could be significantly improved. Of course, the problem they face is the fact that they’re already playing catchup in the AL Central and still look like a 5th place team in this division.

Los Angeles Angels: adroitly turned one year of Howie Kendrick into six years of Andrew Heaney, who should thrive in the big AL West parks. If the Angels get a healthy Garrett Richards back to go along with the surprising Matt Shoemaker, they may have a surplus of decent arms being stalwards Jered Weaver and C.J. Wilson.

Miamihas spent some cash this off-season, but they’ve also gone shopping and upgraded their rotation significantly. After acquiring the decent Jarred Cosart at the trade deadline, they’ve flipped bit-players to acquire Mat Latos, added Dan Haren and a $10M check while parting ways with the unproven youngster Andrew Heaney, and should get ace Jose Fernandez back by June 1st if all goes well with his TJ rehab. Add to that Henderson Alvarez and the Marlins look frisky (their new-found depth enabled them to move Nathan Eovaldi to the Yankees). Rumors are that Haren won’t pitch unless he’s in SoCal, but $10M is an awful lot of money to turn up your nose at. This is an improved rotation no doubt, and the rest of the Marlins lineup looks good too.

New York Metsget Matt Harvey back. Enough said. Harvey-Jacob deGrom is one heck of a 1-2 punch.

Chicago Cubs: added an ace in Jon Lester, re-signed their own effective starter in Jason Hammel, and will add these two guys to the resurgent Jake Arrieta. Past that you have question marks: Kyle Hendricks looked great in 2014. And the Cubs gave nearly 60 starts last year to Travis Wood (5+ ERA) and former Nat Edwin Jackson (6+ ERA). I could envision another SP acquisition here and the relegation of Wood & Jackson to the bullpen/AAA/scrap heap.

Pittsburghwas able to resign Francisco Liriano and get A.J. Burnett for an under-market deal. This should keep them afloat if they end up losing Edinson Volquez in free agency. Otherwise they have decent back of the rotation guys and will get back Jamison Taillon perhaps in the early part of the year. This could help them get back to the playoffs with the anticipated step-back of NL Central rivals Cincinnati.

Los Angeles Dodgerssaid good bye to a stable of starters (Josh Beckett, Chad Billingsly, Kevin Correia, Dan Haren, Roberto Hernandez and Paul Maholm are all either FAs or have been traded away) and signed a couple of guys to go behind their big three of Kershaw, Greinke and Ryu who could quietly make a difference (Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson) if they remain healthy. That’s a bigger “if” on Anderson than McCarthy, who excelled once leaving the circus that Arizona was last year before the management house cleaning and should continue to excel in the huge park in LA. Were I Andrew Friedman, I’d re-sign at least a couple of these FA guys for 5th starter insurance … but then again, the Dodgers also have a whole slew of arms in AAA that could be their 5th starter. Or they could just open up their wallets again; there’s still arms to be had. Nonetheless, replacing 32 Haren starts with McCarthy will bring immediate benefits, and whoever they end up with as a 5th starter has to be better than the production they got last year out of that spot.

Team most improved: likely the Cubs.

What teams’ rotations have taken step backs or are question marks heading into 2015?

Boston: after trading away most of their veteran rotation last season, the Red Sox seem set to go into 2015 with this rotation: Clay Buchholz, Rick Porcello, Justin Masterson, Joe Kelly and Wade Miley. This rotation doesn’t look as good as it could be; Buchholz was awful in 2014, Porcello is good but not great, Masterson the same, Kelly seems like a swingman, and Miley has back to back 3.98 FIP seasons in the NL and will see some ERA inflation in the AL (though not as much as normal since Arizona is a hitter’s park). But Boston’s entire AAA rotation are among their top 10 prospects, so there’s plenty of depth they could use in trade or as reinforcements.

Detroit: Arguable if they’ve really taken a “step back,” but you have to question their direction. In the last two off-seasons they’ve traded away Doug Fister, Rick Porcello, Drew Smyly, prospect Robbie Ray and have (seemingly) lost Max Scherzer to free agency so that they can go into 2015 with this rotation: David Price, Justin Verlander, Anibel Sanchez, Alfredo Simon and Shane Greene. Is this a winning rotation for 2015?

Kansas City: They have replaced departing free agent ace James Shields with newly signed Edinson Volquez, keeping newly acquired Brian Flynn and 2014 draft darling Brandon Finnegan in the bullpen for now. KC is going to take a step back and will struggle to compete in the new super-powered AL Central in 2015, but have a slew of 1st round arms that look like they’ll hit in late 2015/early 2016. I do like their under-the-radar signing of Kris Medlen though; he could be a very solid addition to their rotation if he comes back from his 2nd TJ.

Oaklandwill have a new look in 2015, having traded away a number of core players. But their rotation should be OK despite having traded away Samardzija and let Jon Lester and Jason Hammel walk. Why? Because they stand to get back two very good rotation members who missed all of 2014 with TJ surgery in A.J. Griffin and Jarrod Parker. They should re-join the 2014 rotation members Sonny Grey, Scott Kazmir, newly acquired Jesse Hahn and either Jesse Chavez/Drew Pomeranz to form another underrated rotation. Of course, if these guys have injury setbacks, it could be a long season in Oakland.

Texasmade a couple of acquisitions, re-signing their own Colby Lewis and trading for Nats cast-off Ross Detwiler (who should fit in immediately as their 4th starter), to go with ace Yu Darvish and recently recovered Derek Holland. But Texas could significantly improve come mid-season when injured starter Martin Perez should return. The big question mark for Texas is Matt Harrison, who had to have two vertebrae in his back fused and may not return, ever. But if Harrison can come back, that gives Texas an opening day 1-5 that’s pretty improved over last year.

Clevelanddidn’t exactly have the world’s best rotation in 2014 but has done little to improve it going forward. They will continue to depend on Corey Kluber, newly minted Cy Young winner to head the line, but then its question marks. Carlos Carrasco was great in a combo role in 2014; where’d that come from? He was awful in years prior. Is Trevor Bauer dependable? They better hope so; that’s your #3 starter. They just signed Gavin Floyd after his injury shortened 9-game stint with Atlanta last year; he’s no better than a 4th/5th innings eater. Is Gavin Salazar ready for prime time? He wasn’t in 2014. And there’s little else on the farm; the Indians don’t have a significant starting pitcher prospect in their entire system.

Atlanta: The Braves surprisingly parted ways with Kris Medlen and not-so-surprisingly parted ways with Brandon Beachy, Gavin Floyd, Ervin Santana and Aaron Harang. That’s a lot of starter depth to cut loose. They look to go into 2015 with ace Julio Teheran followed by the newly acquired Shelby Miller, the inconsistent Mike Minor, the excellent but scary Alex Wood and under-rated 5th starter David Hale. That’s not a *bad* rotation … but it isn’t very deep. They have cut ties with guys who made nearly half their 2014 starts AND the guy who went 10-1 for them in 2012. They (inexplicably) picked up a starter in Rule-5 draft who had TJ surgery in June; are they really going to carry him that long on the active roster? They have no upper-end SP talent close to the majors. If one of these 5 starters gets hurt, Atlanta could be in trouble.

Philadelphia: all you need to know about the state of the Philadelphia franchise can be summed up right here: A.J. Burnett declined a $12.75M player option to play for the Phillies in 2015 and, instead, signed for 1 year, $8.5M to play for Pittsburgh. They will head into 2015 with their aging 1-2 punch of Cole Hamels and Cliff Lee, the former being constantly dangled in trade rumors but going nowhere because the Phillies GM clearly over-values what a guy like Hamels and his guaranteed contract can actually bring back in return in this market. Past Hamels/Lee there’s a bunch of non-descript names (David Buchanan, the waiver-claim Jerome Williams and the untested Cuban FA Miguel Gonzalez). Can this team even broach 70 wins?

Cincinnatiis moving backwards: they’ve traded away Mat Latos for pennies on the dollar (Keith Law says there’s “make-up issues.”) and moved the effective Alfredo Simon for other bit players. They’re putting a ton of faith that one-pitch Tony Cingrani will last a whole season and the youngster Anthony DeSclafini (obtained for Latos) will comprise a workable rotation. They do have a couple of decent prospects at AAA (Robert Stephenson and Michael Lorenzen) but they seem to be accepting that they’re taking a step back.

St Louistraded away their least effective starter (Shelby Miller) and acquired the best defensive RF in the game (Jason Heyward). Not a bad bit of work. But they now will go into 2015 with a question mark in the rotation; prospect Carlos Martinez will get the first shot and could be good; oft-injured Jaime Garcia is still hanging around, and there’s a couple of good arms in AAA who could matriculate into the rotation via the bullpen as Martinez did in 2014. It could end up being addition by subtraction (Martinez for Miller) but we’ll see.

Arizona has boldly re-made their rotation this off-season, dealing away 2014 opening day starter Wade Miley for a couple of SP prospects and dealing for 6 arms in total thus far. New rotation may not be flashy at the top (the enigmatic Josh Collmenter is slated for the opening day start in 2015) and is followed by former Tampa pitcher Jeremy Hellickson (traded for prospects), the two pitchers acquired from Boston for Miley in Rubby de la Rosa and Allen Webster and then a cattle-call for the 5th starter competition this spring. Arizona also ended up with former Nats farm-hand Robbie Ray, still have the highly regarded Archie Bradley waiting for his free agent clock to get pushed out a year, plus 2013’s darling Patrick Corbin coming off of TJ, not to mention Bronson Arroyo coming back from TJ later in the season. So there’s a lot of arms out there to choose from, eventually. But getting to Bradley-Corbin-Hellickson-de la Rosa-Webster from where they’ll start will be rough.

San Francisco‘s 2015 rotation could be just as effective as it needs to be (after all, they won the 2014 world series having lost Matt Cain mid-season and given the ineffective Tim Lincecum 26 starts). They seem to set to go with Cain, WS hero Madison Bumgarner, the age-less Tim Hudson, and then with Lincecum and re-signed aging FA Jake Peavy. This pushes Yusmeiro Petit to the bullpen for the time being and seemingly closes the door on Ryan Vogelsong‘s SF time. Rumor had it that they were all over Jon Lester… and missed. So a big acquisition to permanently sent Lincecum to the pen could still be in the works. SF’s bigger issue is the loss of offense. But the NL West is so weak they could still sneak into the playoffs again. I list them as question marks though because Cain might not be healthy, Lincecum could still suck, and Hudson and Peavy combined are nearly 80 years of age.

San Diegohas completely re-made their offense; do they have the pitching they need to compete? They signed Brandon Morrow to replace 32 awful starts they gave to Eric Stults last year; that should be an improvement. But they’ve traded away their 2nd best guy (Jesse Hahn) and are now set to have two lesser starters (Odrisamer Despaigne and Robbie Erlin) compete for the rotation. The Padres re-signed lottery ticket Josh Johnson (coming off what seems like his millionth season-ending arm injury) and still have TJ survivor Cory Luebke in the wings, possibly ready for April 1st. Their 1-2-3 of Andrew Cashner, Tyson Ross and Ian Kennedy isn’t that inspiring, but in San Diego’s home park, you don’t have to be Sandy Koufax to succeed. Have they done enough to compete in the NL West?

Which team has taken the biggest step back? Clearly for me its Arizona.

Who is left?

Well, clearly the two big FA names are Max Scherzer and James Shields. Scherzer gambled heavily on himself when he turned down 6/$144M. Would the Tigers make him a new offer? Are the Nationals possibly involved (I hope not for the sake of the team’s chemistry; what would it say to players if the Nats jettisoned Jordan Zimmermann so they could give Scherzer $150M?). He’d make a great fit in San Francisco … who wanted Lester but would get nearly the same great performance out of Scherzer. Meanwhile Shields could fit in Boston or for the Dodgers to give them the depth they’ve lost.

Past the two big names, you have older guys likely to go on one year deals. There’s no longer really room for Ryan Vogelsong in SF; he could be a decent option for someone. Aaron Harang has earned himself a likely 2 year deal as someone’s back of the rotation guy. Guys like Kyle Kendrick or Joe Saunders could be someone’s starter insurance policy. And of course there’s a slew of injury guys who are like pitching lottery tickets. Beachy, Billingsley, and Alexi Ogando all sound intriguing as reclamation cases.

But, once you get past Scherzer and Shields, anyone looking for a big upgrade will have to hit the trade market. The problem there seems to be this: there’s just not that many teams that are already waving the white flag for 2015. From reading the tea leaves this off-season, Atlanta is giving up, Cincinnati may be close, Philadelphia has begrudgingly admitted they’re not going to win, Arizona has already traded away its assets, Colorado is stuck in neutral, Oakland may look like they’re rebuilding but they still will be competitive in 2015, and young teams like Houston and Tampa aren’t giving up what they currently have. So a GM might have to get creative to improve their team at this point.

Will the Nats be staring down Kershaw in the playoffs? Photo via wiki.

Here we are. After a crazy trade deadline in July, and an August and September that featured the division leaders (in most cases) solidifying their positions and extending their leads, the playoffs are upon us.

Lets take a look at the rotations of the playoff teams (despite the fact that the four Wild Card teams are just one-man pitching staffs until they win the play-in game). Who lines up best? For each team i’ve tried to line the pitchers up one through five, with the 5th guy being the one headed to the bullpen.

Just look at what the Dodgers have tried to do to keep their rotation afloat in terms of player acquisition over the past couple of years. I’d like to have their budget. They will have no less than eleven capable, MLB-experienced starters once they’re all healthy. Yes Kershaw is unbeatable, but as pointed out earlier this year, they are basically a .500 team otherwise. Their 4th and 5th starters have been below replacement for much of the past month but they’re getting back Ryu right in time for the playoffs. St. Louis’ rotation looks just as strong as it has been for the past few years; Wainwright quietly has 20 wins and a 2.38 ERA on the season. Lynn has been great. Only Miller has struggled but still has a league-average ERA+.

It is hard not to look at the Nationals’ rotation and claim they’re the deepest one-through-four, despite Gonzalez’s struggles. I’d take our #4 (Fister) over anyone else’s #4, I think our #3 matches up just as favorably to anyone els’es #3, and Strasburg has a 1.34 ERA in September as the #1.

NL Wild Card:

Pittsburgh: Liriano, Cole, Locke, Volquez, Worley (Morton dinged up late Sept, made way for Cole).

San Francisco: Bumgarner, Hudson, Petit, Vogelsong, Peavy(Lincecum to bullpen for Petit, Cain out all year)

The NL WC pitching match-up will be Bumgarner-Liriano. Both teams manipulated their rotations at season’s end to preserve their aces for the coin-flip game. We’ll do a separate prediction piece.

The Braves fell so far, so badly in September that they were nearly surpassed by the lowly NY Mets for 2nd place in the NL East. That’s crazy. But they still remain here as an also-ran because they were in the wild card race until mid-September. I still think it is crazy what they were able to accomplish given the starting pitcher injuries they suffered in spring training and don’t quite understand why Frank Wren was fired. If you want to fire him for his crummy FA contracts so be it; but the man engineered a team that made the playoffs three of the past five years. Harsh treatment if you ask me. Insider comments seem to think that Wren lost an internal power-struggle involving Fredi Gonzalez.

It is hard to look at these rotations and comprehend where these teams currently stand:

How is Baltimore leading the AL East by 12 games? None of these guys are a league-wide “Ace.”

How is Detroit not pulling away from the AL Central with this collection of arms? Of course, you could ask this question of Detroit over and again the past few years; with a stacked lineup and stacked rotation they have just barely won their (usually) weak division year after year.

How does Los Angeles have the best record in the majors with a non-drafted FA and a waiver claim in their Sept rotation? Would you favor this rotation over Detroit’s?

I guess it doesn’t matter; these teams have bashed their way to their titles and should continue to hit in the post-season. Apparently the O’s aren’t going to go with Gausman in their playoff rotation despite his good seasonal numbers. It may be a case of veteran manager going with the veterans, as Gausman’s numbers are pretty much in line with most of the rest of the Baltimore rotation. The injury to Richards really hurts the Angels: Weaver may be close to an Ace but Wilson showed he is hittable in the post-season and lord knows what will happen when LA has to throw their #3 and #4 choices.

AL Wild Cards:

Kansas City: Shields, Duffy, Ventura, Guthrie, Vargas

Oakland: Grey, Samardzija, Lester, Hammel, Kazmir

AL Wild Card looks like a knock-out match-up of Shields and Lester; the A’s burned Grey yesterday to get the win that put them in the playoffs. Oakland has to be kicking themselves; how did they go from (easily) the best team in the majors for the first half to struggling to hang onto the WC spot? On paper replacing 3/5ths of the rotation (out with Chavez, Milone, Pomeranz and Straily, in with Samardzija, Lester and Hammel) sounded like a great idea … but to me the team’s chemistry was clearly un-balanced. At least they held on to the spot and avoiding a one-game play-in against Felix Hernandez.

AL Also-Rans:

Seattle: Hernandez, Walker, Iwakuma, Paxton, Young (Elias out for year)

New York: McCarthy, Greene, Kuroda, Capuano, Pineda (with Tanakafinally coming back at season’s end. Nova and Sabathia gone all year with injuries).

All Seattle needed to do was *get* to the wild card game … and they’d have great odds of advancing behind ace Hernandez. But struggled to the finish line. Meanwhile Cleveland and New York would have been mentioned here a week ago, but both squads just ran out of time to make comebacks. I’ll give NY credit: they played 7 games better than their pythagorean record with huge chunks of their rotation gone for the season and depending on guys who’s names I had to look up.

NL East: Washington. I thought it was going to be a close race in 2014 until Atlanta lost 3/5ths of their rotation. The rest of the division is awful; there could be a 20 game gap between 2nd and third place.

NL Central: St. Louis. What they lost in offense via FA they’ve more than made up for in their off-season acquisitions, plus they replace Jake Westbrook‘s awful starts with Michael Wacha‘s potentially ace-level starts. No reason they’re letting off the gas now. The best organization in the game.

NL West: Los Angeles Dodgers. Essentially the same team that ripped off a 42-8 streak last year, and they can only get better when injured super stars like Matt Kemp and Chad Billingsly come back from injury. Can and will buy whatever they need to stay on top.

AL East: Tampa. Lots of people are trendy-picking Tampa … and I think Tampa’s improved for sure. But Boston hasn’t exactly regressed, and they won the most games in the sport last year to go along with the WS crown. Boston has replaced key veterans with uber-prospects, who could go either way. Meanwhile Tampa is rolling out basically the same team that would have won any other division easily, they kept David Price, and they’re getting a full season out of ROY Wil Myers. I see this race going down to the wire with Tampa winning it.

AL Central: Detroithangs on for another year, despite some curious personnel moves this off-season. It helps to have two of the best arms and the best hitter in the game. But it’ll be much closer over Kansas City and Cleveland than they want, thanks to

AL West: Oakland: Texas can’t go 48 hours without losing another player to injury. The Angels have half a rotation and a bunch of overpaid underperforming sluggers on their team. Seattle spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the off-season so they can lose 85 games again. And Houston remains a laughing stock; they’ll be pressed to win 60 games again. Oakland’s got as many SP injuries as Texas … but also has Billy Beane at the helm and he’s always ready to make a move.

Wild Cards

NL: Atlantaand Cincinnati: Atlanta may have lost a lot of their rotation … but Minor’s only out a month and the kids they’re throwing out there may be able to tread water. Atlanta’ still has the same offense basically that bashed their way to 96 wins. But it’ll be close. Meanwhile I see both Cincinnati and Pittsburgh taking steps back. The question will be who steps back furthest. Cincinnati lost some offense but replace it with a potential 100-steals guy who’s a defensive whiz in center; it could be a net gain on both sides of the ball. Meanwhile Pittsburgh mostly stood pat, letting their #2 pitcher walk away and replaced him with a guy who was flat out released last year by one of the worst teams in the game (Edinson Volquez). Maybe he’s just a place holder for Jamison Taillon … but that’s still 2 months of potential 6.00 ERA/bullpen sapping performances coming their way. The Pittsburgh fans have to be somewhat dismayed that their 90+ win team did basically nothing to maintain their competitiveness the following year. There’s not another team close in the NL: Arizona was a .500 team but they seem like they’ll be at best a couple games better, but not enough to be in the discussion. Does anyone think the Giants are winning 15 more games this year than last? Perhaps Milwaukee could make some noise and get into the race; that’d be my dark horse.

AL: Bostonand Kansas City: Tampa’s a great team and may very well switch places with the Red Sox as division champs, but for now we’re predicting that Boston has lost *just* enough to lose the division. Meanwhile I think KC finally makes the leap. They had last year to improve; this year they gel and overtake Cleveland in the division. They’re going to press Detroit (who always seems better than their record; how do they *only* win 93 games last year with the pitching and hitting they had?).

Its folly enough to do divisional predictions on day one of the season … even more so to predict who will finish with the best records and thus predict who gets the wild cards. But i’ll give it a shot. In the AL: Tampa, Detroit, Oakland in that order of victories, meaning Tampa gets the WC winner. In the NL: Los Angeles, St. Louis and then Washington, meaning LA gets the wild card and StL would have home-field over the Nats.

Playoff Predictions:

NL play-in: Cincinnati has the better big-game pitcher and squeaks out one against Atlanta

AL play-in: Kansas City may have gotten there … but they’re not in the post-season for long as Boston bashes them to make the

NL Divisional Series: St. Louis outlasts Washington in a heart-breaking revisit to the 2012 NLCS. Los Angeles pummels the ace-less Reds behind their own 1-2 punch of Kershaw and Greinke.

AL Divisional Series: Tampa outlasts Boston in a 5-game tear-jerker, while Detroit beats out Oakland in a complete re-peat of 2013’s playoff series.

Last year, with my excitement over Washington’s Dan Haren signing and my supposition that Washington had the best rotation in the game, I ranked all 30 team’s rotations ahead of the 2013 season. Then, after the season was done, I revisited these pre-season rankings with a post-mortem to see how close (or, more appropriately, how far off) my rankings turned out to be.

Here’s the 2014 version of this same post: Pre-season rankings of the MLB’s rotations; 1 through 30. Warning; this is another huge post. I guess I’m just verbose. At this point midway through Spring Training there’s just a couple of possible FAs left that could have altered these rankings (Ervin Santana being the important name unsigned right now), so I thought it was time to publish.

The top teams are easy to guess; once you get into the 20s, it becomes pretty difficult to distinguish between these teams. Nonetheless, here we go (I heavily depended on baseball-reference.com and mlbdepthcharts.com for this post, along with ESPN’s transaction list per team and Baseball Prospectus’ injury reports for individual players).

Sabathia remains the best chance for another 300-game winner .. Photo wiki/flickr chris.ptacek

Welcome to the latest installment of the “Will we ever see another 300-game winner” post.

(Aside; yes I know the limitations of the “win” statistic. However, nobody looks at a 20-game winner on the season or a 300-game winner for his career and excuses it as a statistical aberration; the pitcher win will continue to be important to players and in the lexicon of the game for years to come, despite Brian Terry‘s #killthewin campaigns).

Of the 24 pitchers in the game’s history to have reached the 300-game plateau, 4 of them have done it in the last decade (they being Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, and Tom Glavine). However, there exists a distinct belief in the game that we may not see another 300-game winner for some time, thanks to pitch count obsessions, innings limits, 5-man rotations, NL small-ball managing, match-up relievers and generally a huge rise in bullpen usage over the last 20 years.

In the past year, I’ve collected some topical reading related to this post:

Lastly, here’s an analysis of CC Sabathia‘s decline in 2013 from Alex Keinholz on BeyondtheBoxScore from July 2013

When we first broached this topic (in April 2009), Sabathia was still the best bet (outside of Randy Johnson, who sat at 296 before the 2009 season began), but it didn’t look that good for anyone else to reach the plateau, and a couple of the names we guessed as having an outside shot (Ervin Santana and Scott Kazmir) seem like ridiculous choices now. When we most recently broached this topic (at the end of the 2012 season), we explained some statistical models we and others were using to try to predict who may have the next best shot at reaching the mark. We concluded that Sabathia and Hernandez were both pretty good guesses at the time to reach the plateau.

How are things looking now?

I maintain a spreadsheet (uploaded to google and/or available via the links to the right of this page) that ranks candidates using a couple of formulas inspired by Jay Jaffe (see 2012’s post for the full thought process behind them). Basically Jaffe’s prediction models assume that the pitcher can win X games per year after a set age (in Jaffe’s case, his simple formula assumes pitchers win 15 games/year until their age 42 season, a relatively optimistic projection and hence why he self-titles it using the words “blindingly optimistic”). I’ve used a couple other methods to rank pitchers (calculating average number of wins past the age of 18 or 23, but since some guys get drafted out of HS and debut at 20 or 21 these projections end up looking ridiculous), in order to find candididates to put into the discussion. I also don’t really even consider a guy until he gets to 50 career wins, so there’s no wild speculation about someone like Shelby Miller (15 wins in his age 22 season) or Jose Fernandez (12 wins in his age 20 season).

So, without further ado, here’s a list of starters right now who are in the conversation of possibly reaching 300 wins in their career and my % chance opinion of getting there.

pitcher

age

wins

% Chance of making 300 wins

CC Sabathia

32

205

75%

Clayton Kershaw

25

77

50%

Felix Hernandez

27

110

10%

Justin Verlander

30

137

10%

Madison Bumgarner

24

49

5%

Trevor Cahill

25

61

5%

Zack Greinke

29

106

5%

Mark Buehrle

34

186

1%

Rick Porcello

24

61

0%

Yovani Gallardo

27

81

0%

Matt Cain

28

93

0%

Thoughts per starter:

CC Sabathia remains the pitcher with the best chance of reaching 300 wins, but i’ve downgraded his probability from last year’s 90% to just 75% right now. Why? Well read no further than the link about his 2013 decline, where his FB velocity dropped, his ERA rose and he posted a sub 100 ERA+ value for the first time in his career. He still won 14 games, but his win totals have declined four years in a row. On the plus side, he’s a workhorse pitching for a team that historically has a great offense, which enables him to get wins despite an inflated ERA (he had 4 or more runs of support in 20 of his 32 starts in 2013 … Stephen Strasburg just started crying). It still seems entirely plausible he can average at least 10-12 wins for the next 7 seasons and hit the milestone before hanging them up.

Clayton Kershaw improves his probability of hitting the plateau from last year to this year based on two factors: First, he has clearly stepped up and is now the pre-eminent starter in the game and seems set to continue to post 16-20 win seasons for the extended future. Secondly, the Dodgers now spend money like no other, ensuring a winning team that gets Kershaw victories even if he’s not pitching his best. He was “only” 16-9 in 2013; I would expect him to put up more wins each season in the next few years, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him with 160 career wins before he’s 30.

Felix Hernandez‘s chances have plummetted; going from 75% last year to just 10%. Why such a precipitous drop? Two factors; first he took a noted step back in FB velocity this year, to the point where pundits were questioning his arm strength. Secondly, he signed a massive deal to stay in Seattle … and Seattle right now is not a winner. It has a completely dysfunctional ownership and management group and seemingly has no idea how to put together a baseball team. They’re competing in a division of teams with better management willing to spend more money, and these factors are going to continue to have Hernandez put up the 13-14 win seasons he has been doing for the last four years. He’s already 27: if he’s doesn’t have back to back 20 win seasons his chances are kaput.

Justin Verlander, like Hernandez and Sabathia, also had a curious drop in performance in 2013, leading me to drop his 300-game chances from one in three to one in ten. At age 30 he has logged just 137 wins and has gone from 24 to 17 to 13 in the last three seasons. If he can right the ship and get back to the 18-20 game win plateau, he can get his 300-game mojo back, but at age 30 he’s less than halfway there, so chances are looking pretty slim.

Madison Bumgarner appears here mostly because of his advanced win totals at such a young age; he already has 49 career wins before his 24th birthday. He’s averaging 14 wins a season so far, and with a 14 win average in every season between now and his age 40 year he’d hit his mark. But I have his chances right now at only 5%; its just too early to really tell if Bumgerner will have the endurance and continued success to get there. Plus, is Bumgarner an elite starter or more in the mold of a Mark Buehrle (i.e., a durable lefty who grinds out 13-14 win seasons for a decade)?

Trevor Cahill is in nearly the same boat as Bumgarner, except that I don’t think he’s quite as good. In fact, Cahill seems like he’s bound for Mark Buehrle territory (see below); an innings eating guy who is always right around the 13-12 mark each season. If he does this for the next 15 years, he may get close. I give him a slight chance.

Zack Greinke has gone from not even being considered to having a 5% chance. Why? Well he’s signed a huge long term deal with a very good team AND he now pitches in both the NL and in a pitcher’s park. In 2013 he put up a very quiet 15-4 record and I think with his stuff and his health he could put up multiple 16-18 win seasons. That’d get him to the mid 200s by the time he’s nearing 40 … maybe enough to have him go for it while pitching into his early 40s. Or maybe not; by the time he’s 40 he’ll likely have nearly $250M in career earnings and may just buy a ranch somewhere.

Mark Buehrle‘s career 162 game average W/L record (14-11) is identical to Bumgarner’s. In his last 5 season’s he’s won 13 games four times and 12 games once. I have given him a 1% chance of hitting 300 on the off-chance that he pitches well into his mid 40s, continues to put up 4th starter figures and finishes with a career record of something like 302-285. He doesn’t miss many starts, so perhaps he’s that durable.

The last three guys mentioned (Rick Porcello, Yovani Gallardo and Matt Cain) are all given 0% chances at this point but are listed thanks to their advanced win totals by their mid 20s. Cain’s sudden drop off in 2013 (a common theme in this list) has seemingly cost him any shot at reaching 300 wins despite his normal sturdiness. Gallardo had a 10% chance last year and drops to zero thanks to my having almost no confidence that he is a good enough pitcher to accumulate enough wins going forward. And Porcello remains essentially a 5th starter who just happened to matriculate to the majors at the tender age of 20. I can see him having a career similar to Buehrle’s; long tenures of near .500 record. In fact, ironically Porcello’s 162-game average W/L record is identical (14-11) to Buehrle’s … which is also identical to Bumgarner and very close to Cahill’s. I think there’s something clearly “accumulator” in nature to all these guys.

What has happened to some of the candidates from last year not mentioned yet?

Roy Halladay went from a near Cy Young season in 2011 to retirement in just two short seasons. Shoulder injuries are a killer. He retires with 203 wins.

Chad Billingsley lost nearly the entire 2013 season to injury, scuttling what dim chances he had. He’s now not even guaranteed a spot in LA’s high powered rotation.

A bunch of veterans who already had little chance (but were mentioned anyways) have now retired: Jamie Moyer, Livan Hernandez, Andy Pettitte, and Kevin Millwood.

Tim Hudson is an interesting case; he sits at 205 wins, lost a chunk of last season to injury but signed on in a pitcher’s park in SF. He’s gotten 17,16 and 16 wins the last three seasons in his mid 30s; can he just continue to get 16-17 win seasons and suddenly be looking at 300 wins by the time he’s 42? Maybe, but he’s going to have to be good these next two seasons.

Thoughts? Do you care about 300 winners like I do, or is it just an anachronism of baseball history that will go the way of 300 strikeouts, 30-wins and hitting .400?

Scherzer’s dominant Cy Young season brings the Tigers to the top. Photo AP Photo/Paul Sancya

In January, after most of marquee FA signings had shaken out, I ranked the 2013 rotations of teams 1-30. I was excited about the Nats rotation, speculated more than once that we had the best rotation in the league, and wanted to make a case for it by stacking up the teams 1-30.

I thought it’d be an interesting exercise to revisit my rankings now that the season is over with a hindsight view, doing some post-mortem analysis and tacking on some advanced metrics to try to quantify who really performed the best this season. For advanced metrics I’m leaning heavily on Fangraphs team starter stats page, whose Dashboard view quickly gives the team ERA, FIP, xFIP, WAR, SIERA, K/9 and other key stats that I’ll use in this posting.

(#2 pre-season) Detroit: Verlander, Fister, Sanchez, Scherzer, Porcello (with Alvarez providing some cover). Scherzer likely wins the Cy Young. Three guys with 200+ strikeouts. The league leader in ERA. And we havn’t even mentioned Justin Verlander yet. A team starting pitching fWAR of 25.3, which dwarfed the next closest competitor. There’s no question; we knew Detroit’s rotation was going to be good, but not this good. Here’s a scary fact; their rotation BABIP was .307, so in reality this group should have done even better than they actually did. Detroit’s rotation was *easily* the best rotation in the league and all 6 of these guys return for 2014.

(#3 Preseason): Los Angeles Dodgers: Kershaw, Greinke, Ryu, Nolasco, and Capuano (with Fife, Beckett, Lilly, Billingsley and a few others helping out); The 1-2 punch of Kershaw (the NL’s clear Cy Young favorite) and Greinke (who quietly went 15-4) was augmented by the stand-out rookie performance of Ryu, the surprisingly good half-season worth of starts from Nolasco, and then the all-hands-on deck approach for the rest of the starts. This team used 11 different starters on the year thanks to injury and ineffectiveness, but still posted the 2nd best team FIP and 5th best fWAR in the league.

(#8 pre-season): St. Louis: Wainwright, Lynn, Miller, Wacha and Kelly (with Garcia, Westbrook, and a few others pitching in). Team leader Chris Carpenter missed the whole season and this team still was one of the best rotations in the league. Westbrook missed time, Garcia only gave them 9 starts. That’s the team’s planned #1, #3 and #4 starters. What happened? They call up Miller and he’s fantastic. They call up Wacha and he nearly pitches back to back no-hitters at the end of the season. They give Kelly a starting nod out of the bullpen and he delivers with a better ERA+ than any of them from the #5 spot. St. Louis remains the bearer-standard of pitching development (along with Tampa and Oakland to an extent) in the game.

(#22 pre-season): Pittsburgh: Liriano, Burnett, Locke, Cole, Morton (with Rodriguez and a slew of call-ups helping out). How did this team, which I thought was so low pre-season, turn out to have the 4th best starter FIP in the game? Francisco Liriano had a renessaince season, Burnett continued to make Yankees fans shake their heads, and their top 6 starters (by number of starts) all maintained sub 4.00 ERAs. Gerrit Cole has turned out to be the real deal and will be a force in this league.

(#1 pre-season) Washington: Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Haren, Detwiler with Jordan, Roark and other starts thrown to Karns and Ohlendorf). Despite Haren’s continued attempts to sabotage this rotation’s mojo, they still finished 3rd in xFIP and 5th in FIP. Haren’s 11-19 team record and substandard ERA/FIP values drug this group down, but there wasn’t much further up they could have gone on this list. If you had replaced Haren with a full season of Jordan’s production, maybe this team jumps up a little bit, but the teams above them are tough to beat.

(#11 pre-season) Atlanta: Hudson, Medlen, Minor, Teheranand Maholm, (with rookie Alex Wood contributing towards the end of the season). Brandon Beachy only gave them 5 starts; had he replaced Maholm this rotation could have done better. Hudson went down with an awful looking injury but was ably covered for by Wood. They head into 2014 with a relatively formidable and cheap potential rotation of Medlen, Minor, Teheran, Beachy and Wood, assuming they don’t resign Hudson. How did they over-perform? Teheran finally figured it out, Maholm was more than servicable the first couple months, Wood was great and came out of nowhere.

(#26 pre-season) Cleveland: Jimenez, Masterson, McAllister, Kluber, Kazmir. Too high for this group? 7th in rotation fWAR, 8th in FIP, and 6th in xFIP. This group, which I thought was going to be among the worst in the league, turned out to be one of the best. Jimenez and Masterson both had rebound years with a ton of Ks, and the rest of this crew pitches well enough to remain around league average. They were 2nd best in the league in K/9. You can make the argument that they benefitted from the weakened AL Central, but they still made the playoffs with a relative rag-tag bunch.

(#9 pre-season) Cincinnati: Cueto, Latos, Bailey, Arroyo, Leake (with Tony Cingrani). Cueto was good … but he was never healthy, hitting the D/L three separate times. Luckily Cingrani came up from setting strikeout records in AAA and kept mowing them down in the majors. Latos was dominant, Leake took a step forward, and Bailey/Arroyo gave what they normally do. If anything you would have thought this group would have been better. 6th in Wins, 7th in xFIP, 9th in FIP. Next year Arroyo leaves, Cingrani gets 32 starts, Cueto stays healthy (cross your fingers, cross your fingers, cross your fingers) and this team is dominant again despite their FA hitting losses.

(#25 pre-season) New York Mets: Harvey, Wheeler, Niese, Gee, Hefner and a bunch of effective call-ups turned the Mets into a halfway-decent rotation all in all. 7th in xFIP, 11th in FIP. Most of this is on the backs of Matt Harvey, who pitched like the second coming of Walter Johnson for most of the season. Wheeler was more than effective, and rotation workhorses Niese and Gee may not be sexy names, but they were hovering right around the 100 ERA+ mark all year. One superstar plus 4 league average guys was good enough for the 9th best rotation.

(#12 pre-season) Texas: Darvish, Holland, Ogando, Perez, Garza at the end. Texas’ fWAR was the 2nd best in the league … but their accompanying stats drag them down this far. Despite having four starters with ERA+s ranging from 114 to Darvish’ 145, the 34 starts given to Tepesch and Grimm drag this rotation down. Ogando couldn’t stay healthy and Perez only gave them 20 starts. Garza was mostly a bust. And presumed #2 starter Matt Harrison gave them just 2 starts. But look out for this group in 2014; Darvish, a healthy Harrison, and Holland all locked up long term, Ogando in his first arbitration year, and Perez is just 22. That’s a formidable group if they can stay on the field together.

(pre-season #6) Tampa Bay: Price, Moore, Hellickson, Cobb, Archer and Roberto Hernandez. Jeff Niemann didn’t give them a 2013 start, but no matter, the Tampa Bay gravy train of power pitchers kept on producing. Cobb was unhittable, Archer was effective and Moore regained his 2011 playoff mojo to finish 17-4 on the year. An odd regression from Price, which was fixed by a quick D/L trip, and a complete collapse of Hellickson drug down this rotation from where it should have been. They still finished 12th in FIP and xFIP for the year.

(pre-season #21) Seattle: Hernandez, Iwakuma, Saunders, Harang, Maurer, and Ramirez.Seattle featured two excellent, ace-leve performers and a bunch of guys who pitched worse than Dan Haren all year. But combined together and you have about the 12th best rotation, believe it or not.

(pre-season #7) Philadelphia: Halladay, Hamels, Lee, Kendrick, Lannan (with Cloyd and Pettibone as backups). The phillies were 13th in xFIP, 10th in FIP on the year and regressed slightly thanks to the significant demise to their #1 guy Halladay. Lee pitched like his typical Ace but Hamels self-destructed as well. The strength of one excellent starter makes this a mid-ranked rotation. Had Halladay and Hamels pitched like expected, they’d have finished closer to my pre-season ranking.

(pre-season #17) Boston: Lester, Buchholz, Dempster, Lackey,Doubront, and Peavy: Boston got a surprise bounce back season out of Lackey, a fantastic if oft-injured performance from Buchholz, a mid-season trade for the effective Peavy. Why aren’t they higher? Because their home stadium contributes to their high ERAs in general. Despite being 3rd in rotation fWAR and 4th in wins, this group was 17th in FIP and 18th in xFIP. Perhaps you could argue they belong a couple places higher, but everyone knows its Boston’s offense that is driving their success this year.

(pre-season #16) New York Yankees: Sabathia, Kuroda, Pettitte, Nova, Hughes/Phelps. Hughes and Phelps pitched as predictably bad as you would have expected … but Sabathia’s downturn was unexpected. Are his years of being a workhorse catching up to him? The rotation was buoyed by unexpectedly good seasons from Nova and Kuroda. Pettitte’s swang song was pretty great, considering his age. Enough for them to slightly beat expectations, but the signs of trouble are here for this rotation in the future. Pettitee retired, Kuroda a FA, Hughes a FA, a lost season for prospect Michael Pineda and other Yankees prospects stalled. Are we in for a dark period in the Bronx?

(pre-season #29) Miami: Fernandez, Nolasco, Eovaldi, Turner, Alvarez,Koehler and a few other starts given to either re-treads or MLFAs. For Miami’s rotation of kids to rise this far up is amazing; looking at their stellar stats you would think they should have been higher ranked still. Fernandez’s amazing 176 ERA+ should win him the Rookie of the Year. Eovaldi improved, rookie Turner pitched pretty well for a 22 year old. The team dumped its opening day starter Nolasco and kept on … losing frankly, because the offense was so durn bad. Begrudgingly it looks like Jeffry Loria has found himself another slew of great arms to build on.

(pre-season #5) San Francisco: Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, Vogelsong, Zito, Gaudin.What the heck happened here? Cain went from an Ace to pitching like a 5th starter, Lincecum continued to completely forget what it was like to pitch like a Cy Young winner, Vogelsong completely fell off his fairy-tale cliff, and Zito completed his $126M journey in typical 5+ ERA fashion. I’m surprised these guys are ranked this high (14th in FIP, 16th in xFIP but just 27th in fWAR thanks to just horrible performances all year). What the heck are they going to do in 2014?

(pre-season #10) Arizona: Corbin, Kennedy, McCarthy, Cahill, Miley and Delgado. Corbin was 2013’s version of Miley; a rookie that came out of nowhere to lead the staff. Miley struggled at times but righted the ship and pitched decently enough. The rest of the staff really struggled. I thought this was a solid bunch but they ended up ranked 23rd in FIP and 14th in xFIP, indicating that they were a bit unlucky as a group.

(pre-season #15) Chicago White Sox: Sale, Peavy, Danks, Quintana, Santiago and Axelrod. Floyd went down early, Peavy was traded. Sale pitched well but had a losing record. The team looked good on paper (16th in ERA) but were 26th in FIP and 17th in xFIP.

(pre-season #14) Oakland: Colon, Anderson, Griffen, Parker, Straily, Milone, with Sonny Gray giving 10 good starts down the stretch. This rotation is the story of one amazing 40-yr old and a bunch of kids who I thought were going to be better. Oakland is bashing their way to success this season and this group has been just good enough to keep them going. I thought the likes of Griffen and Parker would have been better this year, hence their falling from #14 to #19.

(pre-season #19) Chicago Cubs: Garza, Samardzija, Jackson, Wood, and Feldman: Feldman and Garza were flipped once they showed they could be good this year. Samardzija took an uncharacteristic step backwards. Jackson was awful. The Cubs ended up right about where we thought they’d be. However in 2014 they look to be much lower unless some big-armed prospects make the team.

(pre-season #20) Kansas City: Shields, Guthrie, Santana, Davis, Chen, Mendoza: despite trading the best prospect in the game to acquire Shields and Davis, the Royals a) did not make the playoffs and b) really didn’t have that impressive a rotation. 12th in team ERA but 20th in FIP and 25th in xFIP. Compare that to their rankings of 25th in FIP and 26th in xFIP in 2012. But the results on the field are inarguable; the team improved 14 games in the Win column and should be a good bet to make the playoffs next year if they can replace the possibly-departing Santana and the ineffective Davis.

(pre-season #23) Milwaukee: Lohse, Gallardo, Estrada, Peralta, and dozens of starts given to long-men and call-ups. I ranked this squad #23 pre-season before they acquired Lohse; in reality despite his pay and the lost draft pick, Lohse’s addition ended up … having almost no impact on this team in 2013. They finished ranked 23rd on my list, and the team was 74-88.

(pre-season #13): Los Angeles Angels: Weaver, Wilson, Vargas, Hanson, Blanton,Williams: The Angels are in a predicament; their two “aces” Weaver and Wilson both pitched well enough. But nobody in baseball was really that surprised by the god-awful performances from Hanson or Blanton (2-14, 6.04 ERA … and the Angels gave him a two year deal!). So in some ways the team brought this on themselves. You spend half a billion dollars on aging offensive FAs, have the best player in the game languishing in left field because your manager stubbornly thinks that someone else is better in center than one of the best defenders in the game … not fun times in Anaheim. To make matters worse, your bigtime Ace Weaver missed a bunch of starts, looked mortal, and lost velocity.

(#28 pre-season) San Diego: Volquez, Richards, Marquis, Stults, Ross, Cashner: have you ever seen an opening day starter post a 6+ ERA in a cave of a field and get relased before the season was over? That happened to SAn Diego this year. Another case where ERA+ values are deceiving; Stults posted a sub 4.00 ERA but his ERA+ was just 87, thanks to his home ballpark. In fact its almost impossible to tell just how good or bad San Diego pitchers are. I could be talked in to putting them this high or all the way down to about #28 in the rankings.

(pre-season #27) Colorado: Chatwood, De La Rosa, Chacin, Nicaso, Francis and a few starts for Garland and Oswalt for good measure. Another staff who shows how deceptive the ERA+ value can be. Their top guys posted 125 ERA+ figures but as a whole their staff performed badly. 26th in ERA, 19th in FIP, 26th in xFIP. Colorado is like Minnesota; they just don’t have guys who can throw it by you (29th in K/9 just ahead of the Twins), and in their ridiculous hitter’s park, that spells trouble.

(pre-season #4) Toronto: Dickey, Morrow, Johnson, Buehrle, Happ,Rogers, and a line of other guys. What happened here? This was supposed to be one of the best rotations in the majors. Instead they fell on their face, suffered a ton of injuries (only Dickey and Buehrle pitched full seasons: Romero, Drabeck were hurt. Johnson, Happ, Redmond only 14-16 starts each. This team even gave starts to Chien-Ming Wang and Ramon Ortiz. Why not call up Fernando Valenzuela out of retirement? It just goes to show; the best teams on paper sometimes don’t come together. The Nats disappointed in 2013, but probably not as much as the Blue Jays.

(pre-season #18) Baltimore: Hammel, Chen, Tillman, Gonzalez, Feldman, Garcia with a few starts given to Gausman and Britton. I’m not sure why I thought this group would be better than this; they were in the bottom four of the league in ERA, FIP, xFIP and SIERA. It just goes to show how the ERA+ value can be misleading. In their defense, they do pitch in a hitter’s park. Tillman wasn’t bad, Chen took a step back. The big concern here is the health of Dylan Bundy, who I thought could have pitched in the majors starting in June.

(pre-season #30) Houston: Bedard, Norris, Humber, Peacock, Harrell to start, then a parade of youngsters from there. We knew Houston was going to be bad. But amazingly their rotation wasn’t the worst in the league, thanks to Jarred Cosart and Brett Olberholtzer coming up and pitching lights-out for 10 starts a piece later in the year. There’s some potential talent here.

(pre-season #24) Minnesota: Diamond, Pelfrey, Correia, Denudo, Worley and a whole slew of guys who were equally as bad. Minnesota had the worst rotation in the league, and it wasn’t close. They were dead last in rotational ERA, FIP, and xFIP, and it wasn’t close. They were last in K/9 … by more than a strikeout per game. They got a total fWAR of 4.6 from every pitcher who started a game for them this year. Matt Harvey had a 6.1 fWAR in just 26 starts before he got hurt. Someone needs to call the Twins GM and tell him that its not the year 1920, that power-pitching is the wave of the future, that you need swing-and-miss guys to win games in this league.

Biggest Surprises: Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Miami and New York Mets to a certain extent.

Biggest Disappointments: Toronto, the Angels, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Baltimore to some extent.

Disagree with these rankings? Feel free to pipe up. I’ll use this ranking list as the spring board post-FA market for 2014’s pre-season rankings.

He’s continued to hit in the pros like he used to in college. Photo: Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via chron.com

The Nats continue to struggle offensively. They’re generally only above the Mets and the Marlins in key offensive categories, two teams that have basically given up for 2013. They’re hitting worse than the Astros, a team that also had given up on 2013 before it started and whose payroll is 1/6th of ours. Our best hitter Bryce Harper languishes on the D/L, but the team has (finally) made some adjustments and shed some of the underperforming players on its roster and rookie Anthony Rendon has been living up to his expectations.

So, what is Tom Boswell‘s weekly chat is going to be about? Here’s his 6/17/13 version. As it turned out many of the questions were about the US Open, and a few about Hockey and Football. But lots about baseball. As always I answer here before reading Boswell’s response and edit questions for clarity.

Q: Is Davey Johnson the problem with the Nats in 2013?

A: Despite some complaints about his Starting Pitcher and bullpen usage earlier this year, Davey Johnson isn’t the reason this team is losing. Not with a team whose offense ranks 28th in the league in all the basic run-creating categories (Runs, Batting Average, OBP, and OPS+). Changing the manager won’t help; all you can do is change the personnel. And the Nats have done what they can; sending Tyler Moore and Danny Espinosa to the minors, calling up Rendon (slash line as of 6/16/13: .361/.426/.525; yeah that’s pretty darn good), giving Chris Marrero some at-bats. The obvious: they need Harper back, they need the bench to start producing like it did in 2012, and they need Wilson Ramos to come back and spell the quietly falling-apart Kurt Suzuki (he’s now hitting just .215 with little power). Boswell agrees; its the offense.

Q: Did Johnson screw up by not loading the bases in the Friday loss?

A: Situation: 2nd and 3rd with none out; do you load the bases? I’d normally say that it depends on the matchups; a fly ball beats you anyway, so you’re looking for a pitching matchup that you can either get a punch out or a ground ball. Well, they got their groundball; it just wasn’t enough to get the guy at the plate, who broke on contact and was fast. A bases-loaded situation there means Suzuki doesn’t have to make the tag, just get the force out. I guess Johnson could have loaded the bases. Boswell points out the similarities to this and the NLCS Game 5 situation with Pete Kozma but doesn’t give an answer.

Q: Is Rick Eckstein culpable for the Nats Offensive woes?

A: Boswell answered an identical question on 5/28/13. I’ll say the same thing again: I just don’t see how a hitting coach is responsible for players who suddenly hit 200 OPS points below their career averages as we’re seeing with a huge percentage of this team. Rick Eckstein isn’t in the batter’s box; these guys are. Boswell agrees, saying it isn’t Eckstein who is waving at balls a foot outside.

Q: Are the Nats just mentally fragile?

A: Possibly. I think the weight of expectations is causing them to press. But you have some veteran guys in that clubhouse (Jayson Werth, Adam LaRoche especially) who should be leading the team and helping to manage this. Maybe these guys just aren’t “Captain” material? Notice too that the two most senior guys on the pitching staff (Dan Haren and Rafael Soriano) aren’t exactly the best role models either; Haren is struggling too much to command any respect, and Soriano doesn’t appear to be a big clubhouse influence (and I privately wonder if there isn’t lingering animosity towards Soriano’s signing from the rest of the bullpen, which seems relatively close in age and experience). Boswell notes that the team leaders need to step up.

A: Well, if you’re a sabrematrician we should. A pitcher can give up one hit in 5 innings (as Stephen Strasburg did on sunday) and take the loss, while a pitcher can give up 5 runs in 5 and get a win if his offense bails him out. That in a nutshell is the issue most people have with the Win and Loss statistics. I saw a stat on billy-ball.com today that Chad Billingsley took the loss in an 8-inning one-hit outing in 2011 (the run was un-earned to boot). That’s pretty unlucky. Bill James said recently that he continues to use W/L records simply because they’ve been the default way to express stats for pitchers for 100 years. I now view them sort of as throw-away stats written ahead of the meaningful measurements for pitchers, things like Fip and xFip, perhaps Siera. I like ERA+ and K/9 as good short-hand measurements too, but realize that every one of these stats has flaws. The pitcher “Win” used to mean a lot more than it does now; when a guy went 9 innings every day instead of going 5 2/3 and having a bullpen close out more than a third of the game it becomes harder and harder to equate one with with another. Boswell agrees.

Q: How much of Rendon’s hitting is a reflection of his talent, and how much of it is a product of teams not having a book on him yet? Certainly he’s not a .350 hitter, but is he a .300-.310 hitter?

A: Great question. I think its part column A and part column B. For one, he’s an exceptional hitter. He wasn’t College Player of the Year as a sophomore at Rice by accident. He should have been a 1-1 pick had it not been for lingering issues that dropped him into the Nats lap in 2011. And in his short sample size so far in 2013 we’re seeing his great approach; fast hands, ability to use the whole field, opposite field power. Now, a new hitter hasn’t had “the book” written on him (that’s what advance scouts do) so yes, we’ll expect to see teams identify weaknesses in Rendon’s swing and start pitching him accordingly. The great players then adjust to the adjustments. In the ESPN documentary Bryce Begins there was a very telling quote from Braves pitcher Kris Medlen, who commented that Harper had “already made the adjustment” to the way the Braves were pitching him from one series to the next. The film then showed Harper fanning at a pitch to strike out .. and then clobbering the same pitch in a subsequent game. That’s what pro hitters do to stay good, and that’s what Rendon is going to have to eventually do to keep his lofty average. Boswell raves about his stat lines all the way up the minors.

(Editor Note: I’ve had the bulk of this post written for weeks and have been waiting for the last couple of impact FA starters to sign. I’m tired of waiting. If/when guys like Kyle Lohse, Shawn Marcum or Joe Saunders signs, or if there’s another big trade that happens, perhaps I’ll re-post this).

On December 5th, awash in the after-glow of the Dan Haren acquisition, I postulated that the Washington Nationals’ 2013 rotation was the Best in the Majors.

That was before the next shoe dropped in the Los Angeles Dodger’s unbelievable spending spree in 2012: signing Zack Greinke to a 6yr/$147M contract. This is the 2nd largest starting pitcher contract ever signed (just behind CC Sabathia‘s 7yr/$161M deal that he opted out of to sign a slightly larger deal in terms of AAV after the 2012 season). These rankings also are updated for the highly-criticizedJames Shields (and parts) for Wil Myers (and parts) deal, the Ryan Dempstersigning.

The larger story behind the Greinke signing remains the unbelievable payroll Los Angeles will be sporting in 2013; they’ll spend roughly $225M in 2013, breaking the Yankees record by a 10% margin, and all boldly in the face of a dollar-for-dollar luxury tax. And they’re likely not done yet on the FA market. But the focus of this article is a revisiting of baseball’s best rotations, now that Greinke is in the Dodger’s fold.

Instead of trying to figure out which handful of teams are the best, why not rank all 30 rotations? With the help of some Depth Chart websites (ESPN, rotoworld, mlbdepthcharts, and some good old-fashioned baseball-reference.com), here’s my rankings of the 30 rotations as they stand for 2013, right now. For the sake of this ranking, I am trying to take a reasonable expectations case for each of the pitchers on each team, as opposed to a “best case” for each team (this is most important when considering San Francisco’s rotation). I’m also not considering “depth,” just the Ace through 5th starter (this is important when judging Washington especially).

Note: a couple of other National writers have done similar analysis, with David Schoenfield‘s NL-only rankings on his Sweetspot blog back in November and Buster Olney‘s top-10 in the MLB rankings here. By and large the rankings match up, with a couple of different .

Chicago Cubs: Garza, Samardzija, Jackson, Wood, and one from Baker/Feldman/Villanueva (likely two if Garza is still injured or is traded). They also just signed Dontrelle Willis to a minor league deal.

Free Agents as of 1/2/13 that could impact the above list: Lohse, Marcum, Saunders, Lowe. Also guys like Webb, Vazquez and Pavano could be coming out of retirement but likely won’t make much of an impact.

Rumored trades as of 12/31/12 that could impact this list: Harang, Capuano, Masterson, Smyly/Porcello.

Hmm. I seem to favor NL teams. The majority of my top Ten rotations are in the NL. Is this bias? Discussion, 1-30

Washington: If Dan Haren returns to 2011 form, which I’m assuming he will, this is the best rotation in the majors. Not the deepest though; if we lose someone to injury we could struggle to repeat 2012’s win total. But this is an exercise to determine the best 1 through 5, not to determine depth (where teams like the Dodgers and Tampa clearly have more depth). I will say, this is a close race at the top; I can see arguments for any of the top 4-5 to be the best rotation. I don’t want to be accused of homerism by ranking the Nats #1, but can make a man-for-man argument that shows we should be #1 above the next several competitors.

Detroit’s rotation in the post season was fantastic against New York, then god-awful against San Francisco. Why? What can they change in 2013? They better figure it out, because upon re-signing Anibel Sanchez they’re rolling the dice on the same big 4 in 2013. Fister and Scherzer are slightly underrated but showed how dominant they can be in the playoffs. The #5 starter is likely where Detroit falls to Washington; Detwiler’s 12th ranked ERA+ in 2012 will trump nearly every other #5 starter in the league.

The Los Angeles Dodgers has an Ace in Clayton Kershaw, a near-Ace (in my opinion) in Zack Greinke, a potential near-ace career reclamation project in Josh Beckett, and then a bunch of question marks. Two rotation stalwarts Ted Lilly and Chad Billingsley remain injury question marks for 2013, and the rest of their rotation right now are league average hurlers. I believe their pitchers get a bump in adjusted ERA by virtue of their home park, thus I don’t believe their current #4/#5s match up as well with Washington’s or Detroit’s, putting them in 3rd place. Plus Beckett is a question mark; is he throwing like he did at the end of 2012, or is he the Fried-Chicken eating malcontent he has been in Boston the last couple of years?

Toronto: Its not every day you can trade for 4 starting players, including two rotation members. But thanks to Miami’s salary dump, Toronto finds itself with a significantly improved rotation. If Josh Johnson returns to Ace form, coupled with Brandon Morrow’s fantastic 2012 performance and Mark Buehrle’s solid #3 stuff, they have something to build on. The subsequent acqusition of 2012 Cy Young award winner R.A. Dickey changes things though, valulting Toronto into the discussion for best AL rotation.

San Francisco has won two World Series’ in three years with the same core of hurlers, and there’s no reason to think they won’t continue to be amongst the elite in the league. The question remains though; what are they getting from Tim Lincecum in 2013? Is the other shoe going to drop on Ryan Vogelsong‘s fairy tale career resurgence? And, can Barry Zito continue his career rebound? If the best-case falls for Lincecum and Zito (Lincecum returns to Cy Young form and Zito pitches even marginally ok) then I think they’re the best rotation in the game. As it stands though, i’m assuming that both guys fall somewhere short of the best case, meaning that they’re “only” the 5th best rotation in the game.

Tampa Bay has well-known pitching depth, and even with the move/heist of the James Shields trade they have a ton of guys who other teams would love to have. Expect a bounce-back sophomore campaign from Matt Moore and more excellent innings from rising hurlers Alex Cobb and Chris Archer. They may not be the best rotation in the game, but they’re certainly the most value for the dollar.

Philadelphia’s big 3 are all fantastic, but are showing signs of age. Roy Halladay only had an 89 ERA+ last year; has age caught up to him? The drop-off after the big 3 is significant too. But the potential of the big 3 keeps this rotation among the league’s elite. The acquisition of John Lannan didn’t affect their ranking much; he merely replaces the Phillies heading into 2013 with a rookie in the #5 spot. I had Philadelphia lower in the earlier drafts of these rankings, and have them this high on the assumption that their big three are all entering 2013 healthy.

St Louis’s 2012 rotation was rich enough this year to drop 18-game winner Lance Lynn to the bullpen. With Chris Carpenter healthy in 2013, with Adam Wainwright recovered from Tommy John, and with the likes of hard-throwing Joe Kelly or Shelby Miller as your #5 starter, this could be a scary rotation. And that’s if Jaime Garcia isn’t ready for the start of the season after injuring his shoulder in the playoffs. Kelly/Rosenthal are serious arms though and give far more depth than what a team like Washington has. Some pundits are not as high on the ability of Carpenter to return to his career form, pushing this ranking slightly lower than I initially had them. It all comes down to the health of their 1-2 punch; if Carpenter and Wainwright pitch like Cy Young candidates, this rotation gets pushed up much higher.

Cincinnati’s 5 starters took every 2012 start except ONE (the back half of an August double header). In today’s baseball landscape, that’s nothing short of amazing. Mike Leake may not be the strongest #5, but Cincy’s 1-2-3 put up great numbers pitching in a bandbox in Cincinnati. I’m not the biggest Mat Latos fan, but his 2012 performance spoke for itself. Lastly, there’s rumors that Aroldis Chapman may be moving to the rotation, pushing Leake presumably to a swing-man role. If Chapman can repeat his K/9 performance in a starter role, this rotation is even more formidable. Should it be higher? Perhaps; in previous drafts I had them in the top 5, but I just can’t seem to give their top guys the same “Ace” billing as other leading arms above them on this list.

Arizona‘s acquisition of Brandon McCarthy is a great one for me; if the Nats hadn’t bought Haren, I thought this guy would fit in perfectly. Arizona has a solid 1-4 and (like Atlanta) has a slew of options for #5. And, they have help in the immediate future, with Daniel Hudson coming back from July 2012 TJ surgery and a top prospect in AA. I see them as a solid rotation 1 through 5 but without the blow-away ace that other top rotations have.

Atlanta’s found gold in Kris Medlen gives Atlanta enough depth to trade away starters (the Tommy Hanson for Jordan Walden deal). They have 4 good starters and then can pick from 3 top-end prospects for the 5th starter until Brandon Beachy is back from surgery. What pushes this rotation down in the rankings is the unknown; is Tim Hudson getting too old? And what kind of performance can we expect from Medlen realistically? Can he really continue to pitch like Bob Gibson in 1968? Their 3/4/5 guys don’t scare me right now, but the potential of 1 and 2 keep them ranked decently high.

Texas bought an ace last off-season in Yu Darvish, has a couple of good arms developed in house in Holland and Harrison, but has been depending on one-off FAs to fill the void. They need a full healthy year out of their two upper-end arms Alexi Ogando and/or Neftali Feliz to make the leap. Felix is out for most of 2013 though after getting Tommy John surgery in August. Colby Lewis is in the fold but seems like he’s out most of 2013 after elbow surgery late last season. If they buy another decent FA this off-season (Lohse?), this rotation works its way further up. I have a hard time seeing them at #12, but who above them on this list right now do you push them ahead of?

The Los Angeles Angels have a great 1-2 punch in Weaver and Wilson, but they’ve spent the off-season watching their former envious rotation erode. Hanson is an arm injury waiting to happen, Blanton has been pitching below replacement level for 3 years, and they don’t have an established #5 right now. Perhaps this rotation should be lower. The shrewd trade for Jason Vargas helps keep them in the upper-half of the league, based on who their planned #4/#5 guys are.

Oakland’s slew of young, cost contained and quality starters is the envy of the league. The only thing that keeps this list from greater acclaim is Oakland’s relative lack of recent success (2012 not withstanding). Throw in a couple more playoff appearances and Billy Beane can get a sequel to Moneyball published. Like the LA and SF rotation, they benefit from their home park, but that doesn’t take away the fact that they won the division last year. The off-season isn’t over either; I can still see Beane flipping one or more of his rotation for more depth/more hitting and turning to his stable of youngsters again. I’m not necessarily happy with this ranking spot and feel like it should be higher, but their collection of unknowns doesn’t inspire the confidence of the known Aces above them on this list.

The Chicago White Sox have a big up and coming potenial Ace in the making in Chris Sale and the engimatic Jake Peavy. After that are some league average options. Jose Quintana had a great 2012; can he repeat his success? I feel like the 3/4/5 guys in this rotation are all quality, innings eater types, but nothing that really knocks your socks off. Middle of the pack feels right.

The New York Yankees continue to get 95+ win teams with a smoke-and-mirror job in the rotation. Now they set to go into 2013 with one possibly injured Ace and two guys nearly 40 as their 1-2-3. Is 2013 the year the wheels come off the bus for New York? A healthy Michael Pineda contributing as the #2 starter he can be would vastly improve the outlook here.

Boston‘s ranking may be changing significantly, depending on which arms they buy up off the FA market. I think a new manager helps Lester and Buchholz regain their near-Ace form of yesteryear, and Dempster should give them competent innings in the middle of the rotation. But I can’t assume anything when it comes to their 1/2; they’ve both been so good and so bad in the recent past.

Baltimore amazingly comes in ranked this low despite making the playoffs last year with this collection of no-name starters. Maybe i’m underselling their 1-2-3 capabilities. Maybe i’m just treating them like a team that had a pythagorean record of 82-80.

The Chicago Cubs still seem set to be in “sell mode,” so listing Garza as their Ace seems fleeting. Behind Garza though are a collection of hard throwing, promising guys. I like Samardzija, the Edwin Jackson acquisition gives them a solid #4. Perhaps this rotation should be slightly higher on potential.

Kansas City made their big trade to acquire an “Ace” … and only got James Shields. I mean, Shields is good .. but not that good. He’s only got a career 107 ERA+, but he is a healthy workhorse. Behind Sheilds is a collection of guys who mostly are #4 and #5 starters elsewhere, which means this rotation is … below average.

Seattle should have been higher than the teams directly ahead of them on this list just by virtue of the quality of Felix Hernandez … but then they went and traded away Vargas, and seem to have no good ideas on the back end of their rotation right now. This team could be in trouble.

Pittsburgh is getting by on veteran starters who have the ability to look good, and may not deserve this high of a ranking. AJ Burnett had a great first half but settled back down to average in 2012. Here’s a great stat: Burnett is getting paid $16.5M a year … and has *never* made an all star team in his career.

Milwaukee seems like they should be higher with a guy like Gallardo leading the ranks. But their #2 is Marco Estrada, a guy who couldn’t make Washington’s rotation in the years when we didn’t HAVE a rotation. I know Fiers is good; perhaps this rotation should be higher.

Minnesota‘s rotation looks pretty poor right now; their ace is a guy whose a #3 on most teams (Scott Diamond) and they’re hoping for one of their injury reclamation projects to pan out. It could be a long season in Minneapolis.

The New York Mets rotation could be better than 25th, if Santana isn’t allowed to throw 150 pitches pursuing a no-hitter and if Niese pitches up to his capability. However, Santana hasn’t had an injury-free season since 2008, and I’m not betting on it in 2013. They are planning on giving both the 4/5 slots to rookies, meaning there could be some long series for this team in 2013. Their fate was sealed when they traded away their Cy Young winning Ace, and the statement was made about the direction of the franchise.

From 26-30, I honestly don’t see much of a difference between these rotations. Really the only argument was to figure out which rotation of no-names between Miami and Houston was dead-last. I selected Houston for the time being; if/when Miami trades Ricky Nolasco for 40 cents on the dollar, we’ll feel free to rank them 30th.

At the end of this massive posting, I can honestly say that the difference between the 5th ranked rotation and the 6th is often near nothing. Looking back, I can see anyone from the 5-8 range being listed in any order and I’d agree with it. I ranked and re-ranked these rotations over and over again from the time I started writing this post in early December to the time i’ve posted it. Perhaps it would have been easier to just have groupings of rotations instead of a pure ranking 1-30. But, that would have been a copout.

I look forward to your opinions and arguments for some rotations to be higher/lower than others.

Question: Is this the best rotation in the majors? David Schoenfieldalready thinks so. If not, which team’s would you put up against it?

Last year, this same rotation (with Haren being replaced by Edwin Jackson) was considered a very good rotation, but not amongst the MLB’s elite. That’s mostly because most baseball people thought Gonzalez would regress leaving the comfy confines of Oakland. Instead, Gonzales put up a 21 win season, finished 3rd in the Cy Young voting and stunned most pundits with his lowered walk rates. Meanwhile Zimmermann was getting some minor Cy Young consideration mid-way through the 2012 season before tiring in September; in any case the league-wide recognition for our quiet #3 hurler has been welcome. Strasburg is who he is; inarguably near the top of anyone’s list of the best pitchers in the league.

Now in 2013, with these established guys continuing to improve, with Strasburg unleashed, and with an established #2 Haren in the fold, is this the best rotation in the majors? Here’s your competition for “Best rotation” teams (I’ve got these ranked in my rough order of strength):

St. Louis: Carpenter, Wainwright, Westbrook, and two from Garcia/Lynn/Kelly/Rosenthal

Cincinnati: Cueto, Latos, Bailey, Arroyo and Leake

Atlanta: Hudson, Medlen, Minor, Maholm, and one from Beachy/Delgado/Tehran

Toronto: Johnson, Buehrle, Morrow, Romero and one from Happ/Laffey/Drabeck/Huchinson/someone

Am I missing anyone? Here’s some thoughts on these rotations as they stand right now:

St Louis‘s rotation was rich enough this year to drop 18-game winner Lance Lynn to the bullpen. With Chris Carpenter healthy in 2013, with Adam Wainwright recovered from Tommy John, and with the likes of hard-throwing Joe Kelly or Trevor Rosenthal as your #5 starter, this is a scary rotation.

Cincinnati’s 5 starters took every 2012 start except ONE (the back half of an August double header). In today’s baseball landscape, that’s nothing short of amazing. Mike Leake may not be the strongest #5, but Cincy’s 1-2-3 put up great numbers pitching in a bandbox in Cincinnati.

Atlanta‘s found gold in Kris Medlen gives Atlanta enough depth to trade away starters (the Tommy Hanson for Jordan Walden deal). They have 4 excellent starters and then can pick from 3 top-end prospects for the 5th starter until Brandon Beachy is back from surgery.

Tampa Bay has well-known pitching depth, and even with the anticipated move of James Shields they have depth up and down the rotation. Expect a bounce-back sophomore campaign from Matt Moore and more excellent innings from rising hurlers Alex Cobb and Chris Archer. They may not be the best, but they’re certainly the most value for the dollar.

San Francisco has won two World Series’ in three years with the same core of hurlers, and there’s no reason to think they won’t continue to be amongst the elite in the league. The question remains though; what are thet getting from Tim Lincecum in 2013? And, can Barry Zito continue his career rebound? If the answers are yes and yes, then this rotation is much closer to the top of the list.

Philadelphia‘s big 3 are all fantastic, but are showing signs of age. Roy Halladay only had an 89 ERA+ last year; has age caught up to him? The drop-off after the big 3 is significant too.

Texas bought an ace last off-season in Yu Darvish, has a couple of good arms developed in house in Holland and Harrison, but has been depending on one-off FAs to fill the void. They need a full healthy year out of their two upper-end arms Alexi Ogando and/or Neftali Feliz to make the leap. Felix is out for most of 2013 though after getting Tommy John surgery in August. If they buy a FA this off-season, this rotation works its way further up. Especially if that FA is Zack Greinke.

Detroit‘s rotation in the post season was fantastic against New York, then god-awful against San Francisco. Why? What can they change in 2013? They lose Anibel Sanchez to free agency, but their top three arms in Verlander, Fister and Scherzer are just as good as anyone elses 1-2-3 in terms of cumulative depth. If they retain Sanchez, this rotation rises in the rankings as well.

Oakland‘s slew of young, cost contained and quality starters is the envy of the league. The only thing that keeps this list from greater acclaim is Oakland’s relative lack of recent success. Throw in a couple more playoff appearances and Billy Beane can get a sequel to Moneyball published.

Los Angeles has an Ace in Clayton Kershaw, a possible near-ace career reclamation project in Josh Beckett, and then a bunch of question marks. Two rotation stalwarts Ted Lilly and Chad Billingsley remain injury question marks for 2013, and the rest of their rotation right now are league average hurlers. If they make a splash in the FA market (Greinke?) this rotation could rise in the ranks as well.

Toronto: Its not every day you can trade for 4 starting players, including two rotation members. But thanks to Miami’s salary dump, Toronto finds itself with a significantly improved rotation. Is it close to league best? No, probably not. But if Josh Johnson returns to Ace form, coupled with Brandon Morrow‘s fantastic 2012 performance and Mark Buehrle‘s solid #3 stuff, they have something to build on.

Where would I put Washington’s rotation in this list? At the top, or very close to it. Each of our guys matches up well in a head-to-head competition going down the line, with Haren as a #4 starter that you’d likely take 100% of the time over anyone else’s #4 starter.

San Francisco Giants starter Randy Johnson acknowledges the crowd after the Giants beat the Washington Nationals 5-1 for his 300th win, in the first game of a baseball doubleheader Thursday, June 4, 2009, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Despite being much maligned as a method of judging a starting pitcher’s worth, the “Win” is still the essential goal of every starter in the majors and the accumulation of them over a season or career still inspires much thought and discussion. The magical “300 win” threshold remains one of the more challenging career objectives for any starter, and remains an interesting benchmark to discuss. Only 23 pitchers in the history of the game have reached 300 wins.

So, after Randy Johnson‘s reaching the benchmark, and after a number of recent start pitchers also hitting the plateau (Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens and Tom Glavine), are we ever going to see another 300-win pitcher?

Achieving 300 wins in a career is getting more and more difficult. Here’s some interesting stats about reaching 300 wins for a starter in the modern baseball age:

If a pitcher were to enter the major leagues at age 23, he would need to AVERAGE 20 wins for the next 15 years to reach 300 and pitch until age 38.

Put another way, that same pitcher entering at age 23 would have to average 18 wins for 17 seasons to reach 300 by about age 40.

The majors have had ONLY Eleven 20-game winners in total over the past 5 seasons. (Seven of which have come in the last two years, echoing the “rise of the pitcher” and the collapse of the PED slugger era, so perhaps its getting easier to accumulate wins).

5-man rotations mean that starters are averaging 33-34 starts a year, down from the 38-40 starts that Pitchers would get just 20 years ago.

Because of mania over inning counts, specialized relievers, and an obsession with using “closers” in save situations, starters now only earn decisions in around 69% of starts, down from 78.5% of starts in 1972 (source Jay Jaffe‘s article, referenced further down). This means the average pitcher only gets about 24 decisions from their 33-34 starts, making the 20-game winner even that more rare. One can argue that better pitchers get more decisions because they’re more likely to pitch into the 7th and 8th innings, by which time their team should have scored enough runs to win for them. But the fact remains that a lot of wins and losses are in the modern bullpen.

In 2009, just as Randy Johnson won his 300th, I had two long winded discussions (one in April 2009, another in June 2009) an older version of this blog that I maintained with friends about the demise of the 300-game winner. Blog author Jason Amos did a great summary in this posting along with some great links. Now, with another 3 seasons in the books, I thought it might be interesting to see who we were considering as candidates just a few years ago and who might be the next “best” candidates to get to 300 wins. I’ll address candidates and their chances as we present pitchers a number of different ways.

(coincidentally, the 300-game winner spreadsheet I’m using for this post can be found at this link, and in the Links section along the right hand side of this page).

Here’s the current list of active wins leaders post 2012. For brevity’s sake here’s the top 10 (and I’ve included Jamie Moyer as being “active” for the sake of this argument):

Rank

pitcher

age

wins

1

Jamie Moyer

49

269

2

Andy Pettitte

40

245

3

Roy Halladay

35

199

4

CC Sabathia

31

197

5

Tim Hudson

36

197

6

Livan Hernandez

37

178

7

Derek Lowe

39

175

8

Mark Buehrle

33

174

9

Bartolo Colon

39

171

10

Kevin Millwood

37

169

Of this list of top 10 active win leaders, clearly most of them are never going to reach 300 wins. Jamie Moyer has not yet retired at age 49, but the odds of him even making another MLB roster seem thin. Likewise Livan Hernandez and Derek Lowe may struggle to get guaranteed contracts in 2013. Andy Pettitte has returned and pitched effectively for the Yankees this year, but he’s 50+ wins away from the plateau and only seems likely to maybe pitch one more year. Bartolo Colon does have a contract for 2013 but it may be his last season, and Kevin Millwood is just too far away. Tim Hudson, despite his strong performances the last few years, is just too far away at this point as well. The chances of any of these guys to reach 300 wins is 0%.

How about the rest of this top 10 list? Specifically CC Sabathia, Roy Halladay and Mark Buehrle? There’s some intriguing candidates there. Lets look at their chances a slightly different way.

When Randy Johnson hit 300 wins, two Baseball Prospectus authors posted similar posts to this with some interesting analysis. First, Jay Jaffe used a fun little stat he called the Jaffe Blind Optimism method (JABO), which takes a pitcher and assumes he will win 15 games a year until age 42. Well, this incredibly optimistic formula leads us to a new set of more reasonable candidates. I changed the formula slightly and only ran out the 15 wins/year til age 40 and got this list:

Rank

pitcher

age

wins

Jaffe 15wins/yr avg->40

1

CC Sabathia

31

197

332

2

Felix Hernandez

26

98

308

3

Clayton Kershaw

24

61

301

4

Trevor Cahill

24

53

293

5

Justin Verlander

29

124

289

6

Matt Cain

27

85

280

7

Mark Buehrle

33

174

279

8

Yovani Gallardo

26

69

279

9

Chad Billingsley

27

80

275

10

Roy Halladay

35

199

274

By this analysis we see that CC Sabathia looks like a pretty sure bet to hit 300 wins, and for good reason. He’s been healthy, he plays for a team that is constantly winning, and he doesn’t have to pitch like a Cy Young award winner to get wins in New York (21, 19 and 15 wins his last three seasons). He has always been healthy and just needs 5 more solid seasons to be very close to the 300 win plateau. He’s signed through 2016 (with an option for 2017), and there’s no reason to think he’s not going to see that contract through. His elbow-injury scare in the post-season turned out to be innocuous, but we’ll keep an eye on his health status in 2013. If he loses a season or more to injury the chances of his making 300 wins declines precipitously. Felix Hernandez has nearly a 100 career wins at age 26, and also seems like a decent bet to hit 300 wins at this point. But, he’ll need to move to a winning team to make this task easier on himself; he’s only won 13,14 and 13 games the last three seasons because of dreadful run support. He’s signed through 2014 and I’d be surprised if he stays in Seattle (unless they turn that franchise around in the next 3 years).

Clayton Kershaw and (surprisingly) Trevor Cahill appear here by virtue of a lot of early career success (Cahill was an 18 game winner for a bad Oakland team at age 22 in the majors, no small feat). While both have been injury free thus far, it is really difficult to project 24yr olds as staying healthy deep into their 30s. So, we’ll say they’re promising for now but need to get to about 150 wins before we can really start projecting their odds. Yovani Gallardo has quietly been racking up wins as Milwaukee’s “ace,” but is sort of in the same boat as Kershaw and Cahill; he’s only 26, so its hard to see how he’ll sit at age 30. If he’s got another 60-70 wins in four year’s time, we’ll talk.

Justin Verlander‘s 24-win season in 2011, as well as his established status as the “Best Pitcher in Baseball” right now, has launched him into the discussion. The problem is that he “only” has 124 wins entering his age-30 year. He needs to average 18 wins a year for the next decade to have a shot. That’s a tall task, especially considering how well he pitched to just get to 17-8 this year. It isn’t out of the realm of possible, but it is a longshot.

Mark Buehrle and Roy Halladay are both aging workhorses whose chances of reaching the plateau are dimming. Buehrle has just moved to the hyper-competitive AL East and wasn’t exactly dominating to begin with. Meanwhile Halladay’s injury struggles have limited his wins the last couple seasons, likely knocking any chance he had of hitting the plateau. I’ll give them each non-zero chances, but barely non-zero. I’ll give them both the benefit of the doubt because they both seem like the kind of pitchers who could pitch well into their 40s and get the extra wins they’d need to move over the top.

Matt Cain and Chad Billingsley are both mentioned because they had a ton of wins before the age of 25; both in reality are not accumulating wins at the pace they’ll need to stay even close to hitting the 300-win plateau. Plus Billingsley struggled with an injury this year and may be affected next season. Chances right now; slim.

Just for the sake of argument, here’s the next 10 players ranked by the modified Jaffe system:

Rank

pitcher

age

wins

Jaffe 15wins/yr avg->40

11

Zack Greinke

28

91

271

12

David Price

26

61

271

13

Johnny Cueto

26

60

270

14

Gio Gonzalez

26

59

269

15

Carlos Zambrano

31

132

267

16

Jered Weaver

29

102

267

17

Jon Lester

28

85

265

18

Jair Jurrjens

26

53

263

19

Ervin Santana

29

96

261

20

Tim Lincecum

28

79

259

I posted this list because a number of these players were formerly listed as good candidates to hit 300 wins. Specifically, Carlos Zambrano, Jered Weaver, and Tim Lincecum. Zambrano may be out of baseball in 2013, Lincecum may not even be a starter any more, and Weaver, while clearly getting a ton of wins lately needs a slew of 19-20 game winning seasons to catch back up. The collection of 26-yr olds in David Price, Johnny Cueto, and our own Gio Gonzalez are all well behind the paces being set by fellow-aged pitchers Hernandez, Cain and Gallardo, though it isn’t hard to see any of these three post multiple 18-20 win seasons in the coming years.

So, here’s my predictions of the chances by player discussed above (anyone not listed here specifically also sits at 0% chance of making 300 wins):

Name

age

wins

% Chance

CC Sabathia

31

197

90%

Felix Hernandez

26

98

75%

Justin Verlander

29

124

33%

Clayton Kershaw

24

61

25%

Trevor Cahill

24

53

20%

Roy Halladay

35

199

10%

Yovani Gallardo

26

69

10%

Mark Buehrle

33

174

5%

Matt Cain

27

85

5%

Chad Billingsley

27

80

5%

Jamie Moyer

49

269

0%

Andy Pettitte

40

245

0%

Tim Hudson

36

197

0%

Livan Hernandez

37

178

0%

Derek Lowe

39

175

0%

Bartolo Colon

39

171

0%

Kevin Millwood

37

169

0%

Conclusion: I believe we will see another 300-game winner. I think Sabathia has a very good chance of making it, as does Felix Hernandez at this point in his career. But injuries can quickly turn a 300-game career into an “out of baseball by 36” career, so nothing is set in stone.